Stomp is difficult to categorise, it's its own animal. It doesn't have any singing or words, it's got loads of music but it's not got a band or an orchestra, and it's got dancers – but not the thin, leggy sorts of dancers you usually see gracing the stages of the west end, but athletic types with a crazy sense of rhythm.
Now you know some of the things that it isn't, here are some of the things that it is: energetic, energetic, energetic and loud, loud, loud. It's also 3 x fun.
Stomp comes from stomping, and from drumming and from using everyday objects and movement to create crazy percussion rhythms which sound like a cross between an African tribal gathering, a Jamaican street party and a London rave.
There's no story, yet there's lots of comedy to
Stomp, and there's no acting but that doesn't mean there's no drama – some of the things these guys get up to are pretty dangerous, so there are plenty of tense moments. Accompanied by building drum beats of course.
As well as using every part of their bodies they can to make music, the Stompers have also been known to use bin lids, brooms, Zippo lighters, matchboxes, pots and pans, wheelie bins, plastic bags and even the kitchen sink at one stage. One at a time or all at once, in complicated, syncopated rhythms that they need to whole crew to create. That level of teamwork is a pretty incredible thing to witness – and the sounds that come out of it are energising. You'll bounce out of the
theatre.
